


The Cottage by the Sea

by pollinia



Category: Within the Wires (Podcast)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 03:54:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10549650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pollinia/pseuds/pollinia
Summary: I know circuits, Hester. I know how electrons flow, I know charge and resistance and capacitance--I know circuits, and if you and I are a closed circuit when we touch, then maybe I do know you.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nervouscupcakeinspace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nervouscupcakeinspace/gifts).



> Hello! I am not a podficcer (like, at all) but I really wanted to record thus, so I did. You can find the recording [here](https://polliniaa.tumblr.com/post/159232017844/i-know-circuits-hester-i-know-how-electrons%22). Thank you for reading and listening!

Hester.

I am looking at the painting. The mountain scene. I am looking at the painting of the mountain scene and I am--angry. I don't know who I'm angry at, exactly, but maybe you. Or maybe Nell. The--Institute. Of course, the Institute.

The postman rang yesterday, and I hid behind your bed. Or, my bed now? I'm not sure, I guess. I'm the one who sleeps in it. But the postman rang and I hid. I crouched down so he couldn't see me. I think I knew it was the postman--I knew in my brain. But in my body--in the cave that floats in the space to the left of my stomach--the postman was a security nurse. 

Or--or you, I guess.

Hester, I remember some things. I remember some things and I am trying to trust your voice, but I don't know you. Or, I don't know you now. I know you when you are ten. When I am ten.

Is that true?

I don't know.

Because I know you at the park. I know you in the coffee shop. I know you were an electric current when you touched my arm--a sharp shock, a circuit closing.

I know circuits, Hester. I know how electrons flow, I know charge and resistance and capacitance--I know circuits, and if you and I are a closed circuit when we touch, then maybe I do know you.

Anyway. I am looking at the painting, the one you imagined me looking at. I am looking at it and thinking of things on display. Things that are studied like art, but things that are not art. 

Two boys rode down the street on bikes this morning, and I hid again. I think that will not go away for a very long time.

I confess, I have tried the bakery you mentioned, but probably not in the way you had hoped I would. For two days, I cooked and ate the rice you left in the pantry. But, last night, after the sun slipped down beneath the mountain horizon in the distance, I slipped, too, out my door and into the dark. I was a scavenger, slinking down the quiet, sleeping streets until I found the alleyway behind the bakery.

Hester, they discard so much food. I may not have noticed before the Institute, before planning my escape around how much food I could stash away in the hidden places of my room.

I scrabbled through the trash. Like a rat, an insect, but I retrieved beautiful loaves of bread, and my mouth watered. So much is art that we take for granted, even while some things are not.

I squatted in the alleyway, behind the hulking trash bin, and I pulled off crusty clumps of bread and I ate them. I thought of you, Hester, I thought of you eating the same bread, though yours of course would be fresh and warm. I thought of the way it might brush against your lips. I ate the bread and I thought of you and I felt the coolness of the sea air, the salt of it that draped over my skin like lace. I've never been to the sea. Did you know that?

Of course you did.

Hester, I don't know if I can trust your voice, but your voice brought me here. I'm not who I was when I was ten. I am not who I was when I was ran in the park. I am not even who I was when I first played the cassette of your voice, the one that urged me to listen and remember and comprehend.

But, I imagine, neither are you.

I hope you have cleaned up the mess. I hope you are, this moment, imagining the sea. The cottage. The painting. Are you imagining the painting? I hope we can study it together, study it like art which is intended to be studied. Have you noticed the way the painter uses blue in the roots of the shrubs? As if everything that touches the ground is cooled by the damp of the soil?

I hope, when you arrive at the cottage by the sea, we can listen to this together. That we can listen and learn and build. I want to build, Hester. I want to build a new person out of myself, new architecture, new circuitry. I want to build, and I think I want you to help.


End file.
